We're both here in at home, Lill, Mays Johnson.
Hi.
Good evening.
We need to do a disclaimer.
You know the way they do on television, you know.
When they're running something, you know that they might not know.
What are you going to disclaim?
I just want to point out, the director of tonight's show is not responsible.
Craig is back tonight.
We have that out of the way.
Craig is back tonight.
It looked to me like the turkey in the intro was upside down.
I don't know.
I've got a good show for you tonight.
I have with me Dan Wilkins and Laura Smith.
They'll be on in a little while.
They are Christian counselors.
And we're going to be talking about, I call it the holiday blouse.
It's really sometimes a lot more serious than that.
The whole problem of holiday depression and a little bit about their work.
We're going to be giving away a neat prize tonight in the great Nacodotius giveaway.
This is one of the most unique things I've ever seen.
I can't imagine having the patience to do this.
But Denise Matanatics has the patience to do this.
This is a Santa Claus Christmas tree ornament carved out of a pine cone.
Neat and hand painted.
And we're going to give it away tonight.
Courtesy of Chris, the California girl, and the starving fabulous artist present presents.
And all you'll need to do is, a few minutes after we go into the commercial break,
just give us a call and we'll put your name in the basket.
And we will have a drawing at the end of the show.
And the number you'll need to call, you might want to write this down, is 5-6-4-8-3-8-6.
5-6-4-8-3-8-6 and everybody's got a chance to win tonight.
Isn't this neat?
It's neat.
And I need to say that if you win, you have to pick it up Saturday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at Starving Fabulous Artist.
And Bobby Coperson, who won last week, they're open.
So you go by this Saturday and pick yours up.
Lil is just full of all kinds of holiday goodies.
Yes.
This Friday night is the Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
And it is the Hospice Light Up a Life fundraiser.
It is by the library.
And for $15, you can purchase a light in memory of or in honor of anyone.
That's neat.
Yes, it is.
And Hospice does a lot of good work and so go down and do that.
This kicks off the annual oldest Christmas in Texas festival.
And also Friday night, the stores will be open late and there will be food.
And then Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m., the other, the oldest town in Christmas in Texas festival begins.
There will be over 80 vendors.
I think they have about 30 new vendors this year that they have not had before.
There will be all kinds of food, hot chocolate, wassal, sausage on a stick, and they will be selling cakes and pies and things like this.
Also, they have a gift wrapping booth, which is very handy, and free childcare for parents who may want to shop on their own a little bit and leave their children with someone responsible.
It's going to be a big celebration.
Also, in addition to that.
In addition to that, Santa Claus will be there and it will be entertained.
And in addition to that, Friday and Saturday and Sunday from 7 to 9 a.m.
I see Craig gets back there.
I know it, I know it.
The Living Christmas Tree will be presented here at Fredonian Hill Baptist Church.
Yeah, it's free admission.
It is free admission.
I understand that Friday night, possibly, is full.
But for information on that, call 564-8386.
All right.
And we'll be back with more right after this.
We'll be telling you about this week's guests.
Craig will join us this Friday morning at 8 a.m. in the Brat Pavilion Memorial Hospital.
We're going to have a lot of guests talking about all of the holiday festivities coming up this weekend.
You get a free complimentary breakfast.
We'll even give you a breakfast club coffee mug to carry home with you.
How's that for a deal?
You can begin calling now for the drawing to win the Pine Cone Christmas Tree ornament.
That is so neat.
Being given tonight by starving fabulous artists present presents.
The number is on your screen, 564-8386.
And at the end of the show, we will have the drawing, and you could be a winner.
Joining me now is Dan Wilkins and Laura Smith.
Not too long ago, about two, three weeks ago, they were on the radio show.
And I asked them to come back to focus a little bit more on a problem that gets serious this time of the year.
And that is holiday depression.
We'll talk about that.
But first of all, in case you didn't hear them on the radio,
you get to meet them on television.
Dan and Laura, we welcome you to the show.
First of all, we'll start just like we did on the radio show and tell me a little bit about your background.
Okay, I'm Dan Wilkins and I'm a licensed professional counselor.
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice and center and over here in Nacodotius.
Take a Christian perspective to what we do with counseling.
Over here one day a week and then center the rest of the week.
Got my education here at Stephen F. Austin and continued with seminars and workshops everywhere.
And since you were on the show, by the way, I've had some calls and people said they were acquainted with you and said you did a great job.
Laura is more recent to the profession, right?
Correct.
You graduated when?
From Baylor, I graduated in 1983 and I received my master's in 1992.
And you're all together in practice and center and here in Nacodotius.
And we'll talk a little bit more about how you can contact them if you need their services.
But I wanted to find that first of all, since our graduate training is a little bit similar,
I always wonder what motivates people to go into certain professions.
Laura, why did you decide to go into the counseling profession?
Well, my husband's been a youth minister in Nacodotius for about ten and a half years and I've just enjoyed the one-on-one counseling
and just through prayer and seeking what the Lord wanted me to do.
I really felt like that that's where I should be.
So I pursued my graduate degree after that.
Is the profession like you thought it would be?
Yes, pretty much.
Because I'd had a lot of lay experience or non-professional experience and it was pretty similar.
It's a little bit more structured probably.
What about you, Dan? Why did you choose this profession?
This is something I've always wanted to do.
My philosophy of career guidance is find something that you really enjoy doing and find a way to get paid for doing it.
And I really enjoy talking to people and helping people with challenging situations and to have a happier, more fulfilling life.
And really starting out in this field, I guess as long as I can remember what I wanted to be when I go up, it was to be into counseling.
I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
But I'm working on it.
And you said something very important.
It's great to be able to do something you enjoy and have a good attitude about and get paid for it.
That is great.
You do primarily family counseling, right? Marriage counseling?
Yeah, I work a lot with individuals.
A lot of depression, anxiety, stress management, but also marriage counseling and a lot with adolescents.
Is depression becoming more common or is it something we've always had around?
It seems like you hear more and more now about the whole area of depression.
Well, it's getting a lot of publicity right now because it is a lot more prevalent.
We're finding more and more people suffering from depression and it's becoming more obvious that people are depressed and with the publicity,
people are seeking help for it now, had a much greater rate than they ever had before.
Well, that's a smart thing to do.
I don't know if you remember it.
I know Laura won't remember it, but I guess it was when George McGovern was running for president.
He had selected a senator from Missouri by the name of Tom Eagleton to be his vice presidential candidate.
And the opposing forces dug back into his records and found that at one time he'd gone to a doctor and been treated for depression.
And he had to pull out of the race.
He had to name another vice presidential candidate because of that.
Well, we have advanced a lot, haven't we?
We're growing up as a society, getting a little smarter in that regard.
How would you react to that?
Because like I say, I'm sure you don't remember that race, but hearing about that, and I've got what year that was in,
but that was in the 60s, I suppose, how do you react to the fact that somebody would have to pull out of a political race
because they had been treated for depression?
I think a lot of it would probably be lack of knowledge from the public of understanding really what depression was.
And a lot of people treat psychological problems as, you know, hands off, don't touch.
But it's really, it's nothing, you know, different than going to the doctor for headache or something.
It's something that just needs to be taken care of.
Dan, I think one thing people get confused about, and Laura's speaking about lack of knowledge is,
is depression physical, emotional, or both?
Well, it can be both.
There is a chemical imbalance that can cause depression, but I think that's fairly rare.
Most of the people that I come in contact with are depressed from emotional stress and strain,
not dealing with emotions appropriately, particularly anger, stuffing a lot of anger and not dealing with it.
So it's, although there is a chemical depression and we're always careful to rule that out, it's much more of an emotional state.
Are we under more pressure now as people in America?
Yeah, definitely we are.
There's so much pressure to meet the standard of living, to be like the people on the television commercials to,
and we're such a mobile society, we see what's going on.
The aggression, the violence is so much greater than ever before.
So, yeah, our society's changed a lot and some of the changes are very scary.
Laura, you come in contact with a lot of young people.
You are a young person or certainly can identify with that generation.
Are young people now under pressures that most people of my age wouldn't understand?
I think so.
There's a lot more of an image portrayed, especially through the TV and just close the fads.
And you just, everybody feels this pressure to be under this image and not encouraged to talk about their feelings.
They're almost, they're not forced to, but encouraged to have a facade.
And they're scared that people are going to really know them like they really are.
That's one thing we have a problem with is how other people view us and really how we view ourselves sometimes.
How we view ourselves can be a false image, can't it?
No, definitely. Very few of us have an accurate portrayal of who we really are.
We tend to underestimate ourselves and put ourselves down an awful lot.
Yeah, I know my image of myself is, you know, that I'm a 53-year-old, grey-headed guy,
and I know that most people think of me more like Tom Selleck or Bert Reynolds or somebody like that, you know?
So our self-image is never what you expect.
I want to remind everybody you've got just a few minutes left to give us a call.
If you'd like to win this beautiful Christmas tree ornament, a Santa Claus Christmas tree ornament
being given away tonight by starving fabulous artists present present, which is next to Benita Cleaners
at the intersection of North and Carolyn Street.
And if you go in and ask Chris to do a show,
she'll maybe grab a piece of paper and sign an autograph or something.
She'll sign a big CG on it.
Call 5-6-4-8-3-8-6 and we'll be right back with more.
If you're bored and all alone and sitting at home and feeling lonely,
give us a call right now at 5-6-4-8-3-8-6 and tell us to put your name in the drawing
and you could win a Santa Claus ornament from starving fabulous artists.
But you've got just about five more minutes to call before we cut it off.
5-6-4-8-3-8-6.
The whole image of Christmas is happy.
Just all kinds of things to do, bright lights, pretty things, music.
It's supposed to be the happiest time of the year.
And yet for some people that period of time from Thanksgiving through New Year's weekend
can just be devastating, can't it?
Why is it that we can spend so much money producing great commercials
and beautiful shows and lights and doing everything we can to make people up and feel good
and all we do is bring them down?
I think a lot happens from year to year and from New Year's to the next holiday season.
There's a lot of divorces, there's a lot of deaths,
and we tend to focus on those losses a lot during the holiday season.
I think that's where a lot of people really struggle with the holidays.
And then others get caught up in the hustle and bustle
and have a lot of unreal expectations of what the holiday season is going to bring.
They recognize the stress but they keep hoping it's going to be different
and it never is pretty much the same year after year
because we don't take the steps to make it a happier time.
Yeah, there's a let down too.
I don't know if Laura will agree with me on this,
but you spend all of this time and all of this energy
and all of this, the money and everything,
and then on the evening of December the 25th,
all of a sudden you're sitting home and you're saying,
hmm, did I miss it?
It's over with so fast.
It goes by real fast.
I mean, it's a lot of, kind of like a wedding, you work and work for a year
and then it's over.
Yeah, I would assume that most people feel some depression
during the holidays at some time.
Like you say, you may have lost a parent or a spouse
or a good friend or something like that.
So that's not uncommon.
That's not necessarily meaning anything's wrong.
No, not at all. That's a normal part of the grieving process
to recognize those feelings and to work through them.
When do you know that it's serious enough that you ought to get help?
I think you look at how long it's lasting.
If it's a temporary thing, you know, we all get the blues every now and then
or a little down, but if it lasts too long,
if you start, it's affecting your relationships
and the people around you.
If your sleeping habits are changing, your eating habits, lack of energy,
those are tell-tale signs that it's lasting too long.
Now, what can people do?
You know, we are bombarded with all of the commercial images of Christmas.
I often say, you know, that to me the ideal Christmas
would be to, you know, just maybe take the commercialism out of it
and to declare a national Christmas, you know,
where families are together and you're at home and all this sort of thing.
I know that's a fantasy world, but we are bombarded with pressure.
You've got parties to go to, meetings to go to.
There's thousands of activities to go to.
You're in giant crowd shopping.
What can you do to prepare yourself to get through the holiday season?
I think one of the first things is to be realistic about what's going on.
There it is an extremely busy time of the year
and choose carefully what you want to get involved with.
You don't have to accept every invitation.
You can say, okay, there's some things that I'm going to just have to leave out this year
or I'm going to gear myself up and be totally exhausted
at the end of the Christmas season and do everything.
So you just have to be realistic about what you want to do
and how much involvement you want to put into it
and get some family traditions that are apart from the commercialism.
We can't turn it off, but we can focus on the reason for the season
and we can focus on the religious aspects
and we can develop that family time if we really want to.
I've often thought that maybe one of the reasons that the holidays
is a depressing time for so many people is because it's like the end of a year
and you kind of look back at the year and you say, well, what have I done,
what have I accomplished, you know, all this sort of thing
and it's sort of like semi-closure in your life.
Yes, it really is.
We look at it and say, okay, you know, what's different this year from last year?
I remember last Christmas I was doing this
and this is my dreams and this is who I was with
and this Christmas it's different
and sometimes that's a sad difference.
Laura, do you think young people and the young people,
I mean juveniles and early 20s in that particular age group,
do you think they expect something different from the holiday season
than what, say, a middle-aged person would?
Probably the younger ones, smaller age, you know, it's just presents.
But I think as they grow up and even college age,
they expect more to the giving part of it as an older one would.
They start realizing that Christmas is giving, it's not just receiving.
You do a lot of marriage counseling and talking with couples.
The first few Christmases can be rough on a young married couple, can it?
You know, the wife's got a, you know, all of a sudden the family's coming in
and she's got to prepare the perfect meal
and she's got to do all of this on a budget.
It can be rough, can it?
Yes, it can.
There are traditions that each family has to get used to
and do in premarital counseling.
We talk about what the traditions were in the husband's household
and what the traditions were in the wife's household
and try to mesh those together and get an agreement on what they're going to do
so that one isn't, you know, the wife isn't expecting this huge elaborate Christmas present
and the husband, you know, doesn't do that and so her expectations aren't met
and that leads to more disappointment.
It's almost like merging cultures, isn't it?
It is.
It is.
It is.
It's almost like taking everybody in Canada and everybody in South America
and saying, okay, you've got to live together in the United States right in between
and you've got to make all of these things come together.
That's hard to do.
Lots of adjustments, you're correct.
I want to let people know that you are in town now, what, one day a week?
I'm in town one day a week and Lars here two days a week.
And how do we find you?
Do we just grab down the street and look for you or is there a way to get a hold of you?
You could do it that way.
I prefer someone who's calling, you know.
The phone would be good.
In that cadet, our number is 569-1700 or have an 800 number.
It's 800-543-7122.
And are you both over here Monday a week?
Do you work together or how do you do this?
We share an office.
He's here on Mondays and I do Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Oh, okay.
So you're available three days a week?
Correct.
See, we've expanded this three times already.
I would like to mention that on December the 18th, that's on Saturday evening at 6 o'clock,
Lill and I would like to invite you to University Mall.
We're going to be taping our annual Christmas special, which will air Christmas week
in our regular slot.
And we consider our radio and television audiences a part of a family.
And we would love to have you come join us.
We're going to have a good show this year, we think.
And you need to be at University Mall at 6 p.m. on Saturday, December the 18th.
We would love to have you come by and join us.
And also on December the 11th, we hope you'll watch another Christmas special that we'll have
with some beautiful holiday magic from Sea World of Texas in San Antonio.
So we've got some good Christmas goodies coming up and we want you to be a part of them.
We'll be back in just a minute with a great Nacodotius giveaway.
Win this.
I don't know.
It's pretty.
Last week, Bobby Culver's got the necklace tonight.
Somebody's going to get this.
I know.
And I never get to win anything.
I think you're just not eligible when the show is yours.
Sometimes we're going to reverse it and we're going to have it where I can call your house
and you have to give me something instead of y'all calling me and us giving you something.
Why don't we have, since these folks are Christian counselors, they're bound to be honest and legitimate
and everything like that.
In honor of the beautiful red dress Laura's wearing, Dan will hold it and Laura will draw
the name.
How's that?
It's good.
And Laura, while you got it, you might as well read the name out.
Ralph Irvin.
Ralph Irvin.
Apparently, some of us know Ralph.
Ralph, if you're listening, you can pick up your ornament at Starving Fabulous Artists
Present Presents.
That's in the same building with Benita Cleaners at North and Carolyn Street Saturday between
10 a.m. and 2 p.m. only.
And then Bobby Culverson, who won last week.
You can do the same thing between 10 and 2 o'clock only Saturday.
And that's worth kind of readjusting your schedule too.
Yeah.
And when you're there, be sure and look over all the guests.
Boy, they have got some goodies in there.
Well, we've got a big month coming up.
We've got our SeaWorld special.
We'll be taking that this week.
And of course, the Christmas special.
We hope everybody will be out.
And all in all, it's going to be a lot of fun.
It is.
This weekend's going to be big.
We have the Light Up a Life pageant.
We have the oldest Christmas in Texas.
Light Up a Life is Friday night.
Oldest Christmas in Texas is all day Saturday.
And then all weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night is the Living Christmas Tree
here at the Fredonia Hill Baptist Church.
So I'm tired already.
And we haven't even started yet.
We've got to go.
We'll see you tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.
about to forget what time I go in the air.
I'm on News Talk 860 KSFA. Until then, bless your house, dear hearts.
MUSIC
MUSIC
